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Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

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Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#331

Post by hliyan »

spankalee wrote: post #321
JoshTriplett wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 year is 1 year too long, but reducing to 14 years would at least be an improvement over the current effectively perpetual system..

I just don't understand this take. Why should authors not be able to reap the economic benefits from their work? Someone write a novel and everyone else should be able to copy it? It just doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't this line of reasoning apply to physical property? Why can't I just go live in any house I want? Take any car I want?

Because unlike physical property, new knowledge gets absorbed into the culture and language over time, and you cannot hold everyone who expresses it to ransom perpetually. If that were the case, consider how much of today's HN home page could be read without paying royalties.

Another way to look at this: unlike physical property, what you pay for is the novelty. And that wears off.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#332

Post by Ray20 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #235
xattt wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when another country is undercutting domestic production of others in order to impose an Orwellian ideology.

I think the truth is we just failed to invest in the manufacturing tech and now they’re beating us in the market, so we’re taxing them to make it hard for them to compete. I’d way rather we just invest and outcompete them. I don’t think they’re intentionally undercutting us they just have lower costs from decades of investment that we haven’t been doing ourselves.

There is no problem with the investments size, China had way less investments. The problem is in the amount of work and production regulations, which in some cases just doesn't exist in China.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#333

Post by geysersam »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #279
geysersam wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US book market is 0.5% of the GDP. The government could subside every author with the same salary they make today and it would only be a small fraction of the amount we spend on the military.

This is true of many, many careers: if you take that career in isolation, you could fund just the people in that career at their current salaries, for a tiny fraction of GDP. That doesn't scale to the entire populace, and there's no good justification for subsidizing this group and not others. UBI, on the other hand, is entirely feasible, not least of which because it ditches the completely infeasible "at their curre…

A reason for subsiding this group but not others is that our economic system is so bad at utilizing the potential of their work.

It's literally free to distribute all books/newspapers/magazines to all people in the world. Why aren't we?

It's common to have state intervention in markets that are unable to utilize resources efficiently on their own.

About UBI, sure! The point of my comment was that this isn't a "fanciful overhaul of society" but a real possibility that could be implemented given some though and political will. UBI also fits that category, but is probably a bit more expensive and disruptive than financing authors.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#334

Post by WalterBright »

eat_veggies wrote: post #324
WalterBright wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot make money off of people who are starving.

You can force starving people into unfair arrangements where the choice is between getting screwed or dying of hunger. You can use the existence of starving people as a threat to keep your work force in line. Sometimes it's not even the starving people that you're making money off of, but their minerals and land. There are a lot of ways to profit from suffering. And sometimes it's not even about profit—it can just fe…

> You can force starving people into unfair arrangements where the choice is between getting screwed or dying of hunger.

History shows us that if you want to force starving people to work for you, you also need to shoot the people who refuse. See the Soviet gulags, and the Nazi slave labor camps.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#335

Post by CaptainFever »

gwright wrote: post #124
zouhair wrote: post #36

This is why Piracy is good for humanity.

Does your theory apply to the content consumed during the training of LLMs? If not why not? Where should we draw the line regarding intellectual property rights?

1. Yes.

2. LLMs are an incredible step forward in humanity's progression.

3. 10 years from publishing, then public domain afterwards. The content must be commercialised to have copyright; if it's available for free, it should already be public domain, because copyright is supposed to help you make money, not help you control the use of information.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#336

Post by CaptainFever »

Zuiii wrote: post #225
thedevilslawyer wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Absolutely. 2. Information and knowledge is for all. 3. The line to draw is 10 years to commercialize, and then release into public domain. Statute of Anne was 14 years ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne ), but 10 is better for today's age.

> The line to draw is 10 years to commercialize, and then release into public domain. Statute of Anne was 14 years ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne ), but 10 is better for today's age. I'd vote for politicians who push for laws like this. Sadly none do.

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technolibertarianism

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#337

Post by CaptainFever »

mardifoufs wrote: post #268
thedevilslawyer wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Absolutely. 2. Information and knowledge is for all. 3. The line to draw is 10 years to commercialize, and then release into public domain. Statute of Anne was 14 years ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne ), but 10 is better for today's age.

Should GPLv3 code be licensed to the public domain after 10 years too?

Yes.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#338

Post by johnnyanmac »

spankalee wrote: post #321
JoshTriplett wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 year is 1 year too long, but reducing to 14 years would at least be an improvement over the current effectively perpetual system..

I just don't understand this take. Why should authors not be able to reap the economic benefits from their work? Someone write a novel and everyone else should be able to copy it? It just doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't this line of reasoning apply to physical property? Why can't I just go live in any house I want? Take any car I want?

Ideally we simply give proper attribution and prestige to those sharing ideas. But if we could do that the copyright system wouldn't be needed.

Personally, I always threw around 28 + 28 in my head (given that life expectancy in the 18th century was vastly different), with a slight twist: only the original copyright author can renew the term, and the copyright ownership in this context needs to be some sufficiently small group inventors. Anything owned by a corporation larger than X people won't renew.

So any potential transferral or relinquishing of ownership needs to at the very least appease the creator(s) so these corporations can get their other 28 years of their terms.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#339

Post by TaylorAlexander »

WalterBright wrote: post #300
deaddodo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Star Trek Replicators were invented today, we're so stupid we'd outlaw them. You're so optimistic to think the law would even be this fair. More like limit access to corporations as "the only custodians responsible enough to wield them", while still allowing the developing world to starve and further increasing their profit margins simultaneously to decreasing working wages and employment levels.

You cannot make money off of people who are starving.

This is false. You can create conditions where their only real choice is to work for you. And since they’re starving, they’ll work for very low wages. You sell the product of their labor and collect the surplus value created by their work.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#340

Post by johnnyanmac »

hliyan wrote: post #331
spankalee wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't understand this take. Why should authors not be able to reap the economic benefits from their work? Someone write a novel and everyone else should be able to copy it? It just doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't this line of reasoning apply to physical property? Why can't I just go live in any house I want? Take any car I want?

Because unlike physical property, new knowledge gets absorbed into the culture and language over time, and you cannot hold everyone who expresses it to ransom perpetually. If that were the case, consider how much of today's HN home page could be read without paying royalties. Another way to look at this: unlike physical property, what you pay for is the novelty . And that wears off.

There's a difference between perpetuality and "1 year is too long". A year may barely be enough time to get your IP to market. Meanwhile competitors will outproduce you, sit on it, and flood the market.

>Another way to look at this: unlike physical property, what you pay for is the novelty. And that wears off.

In my eyes, I pay to show demand to the creator to keep doing this thing. We can certainly argue if authors get enough of this, but I don't think rewarding skilled labor is a "novelty".

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